Doesn't it feel like we are developing our own "Kosher" set of ritual or dietary rules that must be followed to be fully accepted by God?
It seems odd to me that God gives us revelation and man wants to complicate the hell out of it.

What seems even odder to me is that man seems determined to turn something God specifically said was not a commandment into not only a commandment, but one that supposedly could dramatically alter our eternal destiny.

(I was bad yesterday. I had a very small glass of wine at my daughter's house. This is the first time I've ever broken my own rule of two glasses of wine a year -- one on Thanksgiving and another of Christmas. I felt sort of guilty, but man did it ever taste wonderful.)

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." ~Rudyard Kipling ~

"It is not so much the pain and suffering of life which crushes the individual as it is its meaninglessness and hopelessness." C. A. Elwood

“It is not the function of religion to answer all the questions about God’s moral government of the universe, but to give one courage, through faith, to go on in the face of questions he never finds the answer to in his present status.” TPC: Harold B. Lee 223

"I struggle now with establishing my faith that God may always be there, but may not always need to intervene" Heber13

Yeah, that's what I've been trying to tell people, but they're like "it must be good so why has the church banned it?"

Like I've said above, if the church allowed it, I would never partake of it again. I've experience of it..Ditto cigarettes and alcohol.

The best thing about coffee is the smell.

DASH1730 "An Area Authority...[was] asked...who...would go to the Telestial kingdom. His answer: "murderers, adulterers and a lot of surprised Mormons!"'
1ST PRES 1978 "[LDS] believe...there is truth in many religions and philosophies...good and great religious leaders... have raised the spiritual, moral, and ethical awareness of their people. When we speak of The [LDS] as the only true church...it is...authorized to administer the ordinances...by Jesus Christ... we do not mean... it is the only teacher of truth."

Wow, 6 cups of coffee a day is a lot! With our legalistic lists of dos and don'ts, I don't think we, as a people, have learned the value of moderation very well. I would hope that we could get to a place where we leave more personal choice to the Word of Wisdom and also do a better job of teaching moderation.

I see so much of our approach to "commandments" as being a well-intentioned desire to control behavior out of a fear that if we are more tolerant of a behavior, people will take it to catastrophic extremes. For example, my wife and I recently had a good, honest discussion with some couple friends (the man is a bishop) about teenagers and masturbation. Our view is that we need to have a more relaxed approach and it should not be a problem unless it's a real problem (interfering with life) and that the zero tolerance policy causes a lot of unnecessary guilt and shame. The response was that masturbation itself probably isn't that big of a deal, but if we were more tolerant and allowed it that people would take it to extremes. They thought it was better to have a strict policy and expect some shortfalls than to give the green light and have people go nuts.

I think we need to teach good values and moderation and let people navigate these things themselves. The bishop could offer pastoral care if things become a problem for people, but I think policing and controlling behavior is exhausting for everyone.

...I think we need to teach good values and moderation and let people navigate these things themselves. The bishop could offer pastoral care if things become a problem for people, but I think policing and controlling behavior is exhausting for everyone.

I completely agree.
It was Joseph Smith that said:

I teach them correct principles and they govern themselves.

This was in response to a question How do you govern so many people so well?

I love this quote from Richard Rohr's The Art of Letting Go: Living the Wisdom of St. Francis:

"Without a certain degree of inner freedom, you cannot love and you will not love. For Jesus and for St. Francis, freedom was the way to love. I know that you and I haven't grown up as thinking of religion as a path to freedom. It was mostly a set of prescriptions, a set of do's and don'ts, musts and oughts and shoulds, which we pushed back against, as children always do. But, I think that's low-level religion. I think high-level religion is to tell us where true freedom can be found."

I was reading in the Journal of Discourses recently & Brigham Young is credited with the following quote:

The Lord gave me strength to lay aside tobacco, and it is very rarely indeed that I taste tea or coffee: yet I have no objection to aged persons, when they are fatigued and feel infirm, taking a little stimulus that will do them good. It is wrong to use narcotics, for the nervous system is destroyed or injured thereby; but we should maintain a healthy action of all the powers of the body, which should be devoted to the service of our Father and God in building up His kingdom on the earth

This was in 1865, 32 years after the revelation was originally given.
It then changed into what we have today.
Many times we have the impression that God speaks from Heaven & gives revelation & it is completely formed & never changes.
In reality it develops and changes over time. Sometimes that is good when you consider the opioid epidemic today.
Other times, it becomes codified into a "Kosher" belief system that passes judgement on the followers.
Outward signs of righteousness or sin. I don't believe it was meant to be used to measure righteousness.

The fruits of coffee are whatever those fruits are for each individual, influenced greatly by frequency and dosage relative to that person - much like SO many other things in life.

I see through my glass, darkly - as I play my saxophone in harmony with the other instruments in God's orchestra. (h/t Elder Joseph Wirthlin)

Even if people view many things differently, the core Gospel principles (LOVE; belief in the unseen but hoped; self-reflective change; symbolic cleansing; striving to recognize the will of the divine; never giving up) are universal.

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." H. L. Mencken